3 July 2009
by Josh

Mafia Wars hits 4 million users

Mafia Wars from Zynga, the free social-networking multiplayer browser-based RPG game that you can play via Myspace, Facebook, Yahoo Games and on your iPhone, etc., has passed the 4 million users mark!

This makes it one of the most popular social networking online titles. According to Gamasutra, the number of daily players taking part in the game has doubled over the last three months.

And although the game is free, microtransactions are offered which allow the company to make some direct cash. Zynga also believes that microtransactions are helping the game on its way to becoming a true “cult classic”.

Zynga itself has even been building its own company just like in the game. They recently added game designer Brian Reynolds of Alpha Centauri and Rise of Nations fame as their “chief designer”.

I’m actually surprised that the game has only reached 4 million. Given that every single young person I know seems to play it and other games of its type fairly regularly.

Via Gamasutra

3 July 2009
by Josh

Dragon Ball game publishing rights go from Atari to Namco Bandai

Namco Bandai Games America has made a major announcement; The company has secured the Dragon Ball franchise publishing rights from former rights-holder Atari.

This is huge because in 2008, the Dragon Ball franchise made up nearly half of Atari’s sales.

The rights that Namco Bandai now owns stretches to all consoles and handhelds and will begin in January of 2010. The deal with rights-holders Toei Animation and FUNimation will last for five years, so Namco Bandai will be publishing Dragon Ball games until 2015!

Although the rights don’t officially start until 2010 for Namco, nonetheless they actually will be publishing a few Dragon Ball games before then, proving how far out of favor Atari has fallen with the license holders. Namco will publish Dragon Ball: Raging Blast on Xbox 360 and PS3, Dragon Ball: Revenge of King Piccolo for Wii and Dragon Ball Z: Attack of the Saiyans for DS this Fall.

3 July 2009
by Josh

Warner Bros. buyout of Midway now official

It’s official, movie giant and video game publisher Warner Bros. has officially purchased Midway, saving the company from certain doom after Midway USA filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

They purchased Midway for a cheap $33 million dollars, and cut costs even further by only purchasing certain aspects of the company. What did they buy? Naturally, the license to Mortal Kombat was at the top of their list, but they also purchased two of Midway’s four development studios . . . . leaving the other two to fend for themselves (i.e., they better find a publisher quick before they go under. They were given 60 days notice).

Now we just need to wait and see what the next Mortal Kombat 9 title will be all about. This also makes me wonder if Warner Bros. will put the 3rd Mortal Kombat movie on the fast track, cause they could certainly make some dough by creating an awesome MK-based film that serves as a reboot of the MK film franchise.

3 July 2009
by Ferry

Mario Marathon 2 for Child’s Play Charity starts July 10th

Beginning Friday, July 10, gamers from Lafayette, Indiana will host the second annual Mario Marathon benefiting Child’s Play Charity, which provides toys, games and books to patients of children’s hospitals world wide. VGB will put up the live video feed on the frontpage next week.

We covered Mario Marathon 2008, the multi day internet event broadcast live online, last year as well. And they did a great job attracting an audience from around the world. Be sure to come and watch as a team of three plays through twenty five years of Super Mario Brothers video games. Those wishing to support the event are encouraged to donate directly to Child’s Play through the mariomarathon.com web site.

The initial event, held in 2008, lasted fifty seven hours, attracted over 100,000 viewers, and raised nearly $12,000 for Child’s Play. This year’s event is projected to last longer, with the length extended by each donation. “It’s a kind of endurance stunt to promote Child’s Play,” says Brian Brinegar, Event Coordinator, “a video game reality show.” Viewers of the event will have the opportunity to interact with the team and win various Mario themed prizes.

The Child’s Play Charity is a game industry charity dedicated to improving the lives of children with toys and games in a network of over sixty hospitals world wide. Since its inception in 2003, the charity has distributed over 3.5 million dollars worth of toys, games, books, and cash . “We rely heavily on community run initiatives such as Mario Marathon.” says Kristin Lindsay, with Child’s Play, “These fund raising events represent our greatest strength: the generosity and determinations of gamers.”

“We would not be able to offer the opportunity to play video games to so many patients without the generous donation of Child’s Play”, says Rena Brown, Toy Room co-chair with Indianapolis based Riley Hospital for Children, “Video games are a great activity because the children can “escape” to another world.”

Watch the event live on the web at beginning July 10th at 9:00 AM EDT. Donations for the event are being accepted through July 15th.

3 July 2009
by Josh

Vote for your favorite Tatsunoko Vs. Capcom: Ultimate All-Stars characters

Capcom wants to know who are your favorite Tatsunoko vs Capcom: Ultimate All-Stars characters?

The company is holding the vote on their Capcom Unity blog, and they say that the voting WILL be used for something “fun”. But they can’t tell us what it is yet. The game will be released “this Winter” (which could slip into early 2010) exclusively for Wii.

To quote Capcom:

“Why vote? It matters to . . . something fun. I can’t tell you exactly what that is YET, but if you like these characters or this game, take the time to tell us who you like best.

We’re looking to see your very favorite character from the current Tatsunoko Vs Capcom: Ultimate All-Stars lineup, so pick one from the Tatsunoko side, and one from the Capcom side.”

Vote here who your favorite Tatsunoko vs Capcom character is. And let us know what you think this “something fun” might be?

Last but not least, here is a video interview for Tatsunoko vs Capcom

3 July 2009
by Josh

Starcraft 2’s single player missions like mini-games

Some new details have been revealed regarding the single-player mode of StarCraft 2.

According to an interview with Shacknews, Blizzard’s Dustin Browder stated how players will have the ability to come back to missions later on when they are more powerful.

To quote:
He says the missions aren’t linear, so if you can’t beat one, you can say “I’m going to go [get] myself something powerful and come back here and make this one suffer”.

Blizzard also says that they want to add as much originality and “spice” to the standard RTS single-player patrol/destroy formula as they can.

Examples of this include:

* Rising lava that will kill everything on the ground. Get to the high ground above it or risk total annihilation.
* One mission has Terrans attacking at night. But they hide during the day. So to get to them you need to stay out all night.

These situations are interestingly described by the developers as “minigames”, and they say these mini-games will range in time from 15-45 minutes long and will all have unique content that won’t be recycled from previous missions.

All of these missions are accessible via a “central, immersive hub” as seen in the screenshot above.

Via Shacknews, Kotaku

3 July 2009
by Josh

First video of Gaikai streaming game service

If you haven’t heard of Gaikai, the system is a streaming game service that will allow you to play high-end PC games with a lower-end computer, similar to the OnLive service.

Below you can watch a video of founder David Perry explaining and demoing the service. Including these aspects:

* No installing anything. (He is running regular Windows Vista, with the latest Firefox and Flash is installed.)
* Using a low-spec server, a very custom configuration, fully virtualized. Why? To keep the costs to an absolute minimum. They had 7 Call of Duty games running in their E3 demo server recently.
* Data travel distance is around 800 miles (round trip) on this demo as that’s where the server is. They get a 21 millisecond ping on that route. The final delay will be 10 milliseconds as they just added a server in Irvine California, but it’s not added to their grid yet. (So this demo is twice the delay you would personally get).
* This server is not hosted by a Tier 1 provider, just a regular Data Center in Freemont California. Also, I’m not cheating and using fiber connections for our demos. This is a home cable connection in a home.
* According to Perry, “We don’t claim to have 5,000 pages of patents, we didn’t take 7 years, and we do not claim to have invented 1 millisecond encryption and custom chips. As you can see, we don’t need them, and so our costs will be much less.”
* They designed Gaikai for the “real” internet. The video compression codecs change in realtime based on the need of the application (or game), and based on the hardware & bandwidth you have.
* Their bandwidth is mostly sub 1 megabit across all games. (Works with Wifi, works on netbooks with no 3D card, etc.)
* Perry says regarding the video below: “If you hear any clicks, they are coming from my wireless headset microphone. I won’t use that next time I promise.”
* Perry regarding the below video: “I made a few video cuts using Windows Movie maker to cut out dead air. Like Need for Speed has far to many menus with loads & delays between them. So I tried to keep the pace up so you see plenty of demos”
* Perry says, “I keep getting asked what operating system we use. We are completely OS agnostic, some demos come from Linux, some come from Windows and will ultimately support streaming from MAC servers too.”

Their goal is to “remove all the friction between hearing about a game and trying it out, to help reduce the cost of gaming, to grow video game audiences, to raise the revenue that publishers and developers can earn, and (most importantly) to make games accessible everywhere.”

See Gaikai in action with this video from David Perry.

3 July 2009
by Josh

Battlefield 1943 release date is July 8th, 2009

Battlefield 1943 is headed to Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation 3 for $15 next week.

Battlefield 1943 is a critically acclaimed First-Person Shooter (FPS) multiplayer game that puts players in the middle of a dogfight on land, sea or in the skies.

The game introduces two thrilling new modes that can be played across four classic Battlefield tropical WWII maps: Wake Island, Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima and Coral Sea. These maps are inspired by the award winning Battlefield 1942 game, but have been redesigned and reengineered using the DICE destructible Frostbite engine which takes down walls, blockades and cover spots, leaving players with almost nowhere to hide.

The Coral Sea map will be unlocked as part of a worldwide community challenge, where players will work together to reach 43 million kills on both Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network. To help gamers reach that goal, up to 24 players can play together online in countless matches.

They will have the freedom to compete by land, air and sea as either the US Marines or the Imperial Japanese Navy. Whether they choose to play the role of a rifleman crawling through the trenches, a steel-fisted tank commander, or a dog fighting ace pilot, gamers will have the power to rule the battlefield.

“Battlefield 1943 is going to change consumer expectations of what a downloadable game can be. By offering Frostbite’s next generation destruction technology with a full Vehicle Warfare FPS multiplayer experience at a mere 560MB, Battlefield 1943 sets a new standard,” said Gordon Van Dyke, Producer on Battlefield 1943. “Our goal is to blow people away with a fully accessible, retail-calibre game for veteran Battlefield fans and shooter fans alike to enjoy for only $10.”

Here is the official trailer for the game.

3 July 2009
by Josh

Grease: The Video Game announced for Wii and DS

505 Games has announced that they are making Grease: The Video Game for DS and Wii, in collaboration with Paramount Digital Entertainment.

As you would expect, the game will allow players to sing and dance along with all their favorite characters to their favorite songs from the classic musical such as Danny, Sandy, The Pink Lady and the T-Birds.

The game will use both the Wii’s Motion Sensing abilities as well as the microphone Wii Speak accessory for the Wii version and the DS version will make use of the built-in microphone and touch-screen.

“We are really excited about working with Paramount Digital Entertainment to turn this world famous film into a video game for the very first time. Working with such a well known and much loved brand is a great opportunity and we believe the collaboration further strengthens 505 Games’ entertainment portfolio,” commented Ian Howe, Managing Director 505 Games.

“Paramount Digital Entertainment is pleased to be working with 505 Games to develop Grease,” said John Kavanagh, Senior Vice President of Video Games for Paramount Digital Entertainment. “Grease is the ideal opportunity to reach a broad gaming audience who love to sing, dance and have fun with a party-style game.”

3 July 2009
by Josh

Asteroids: The Movie rights now in Universal’s hands

Asteroids: The Movie is coming. No that is not a typo. Yes a movie is being created based on the arcade classic “Asteroids“. We do not joke.

What’s even more interesting about this dubiousness, is the fact that several studios (four in fact) had a bidding war over the rights to make the classic game into a movie! Of those studios bidding for the chance to make a movie about blowing up asteroids with a spaceship, Universal Studios emerged as the winner.

The script for the film is to be written by Matthew Lopez (Disney films Escape to Witch Mountain and Bedtime Stories and the upcoming The Sorcerer’s Apprentice) and produced by Lorenzo di Bonaventura (Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra).

Now we just gotta wait for the Hollywood films of Pac-Man, Pong, Qix, Galaga and Q-Bert!

Via Arst Technica